A Pre-loved home office {on a budget}….

For the first time ever, I have an actual office at home.

In our old house, my “office” was basically just a corner of the dining room and honestly, I didn’t mind it at all.  I loved being downstairs in the middle of everything. I worked long hours back then and quite often ended up logging back in on an evening or over a weekend to help someone or deal with something urgent, so having my desk downstairs meant I still felt part of whatever was going on in the house while I worked.

I could answer emails while tea was cooking, quickly check something while everyone else was watching TV or just generally dip in and out of work without completely disappearing upstairs on my own.

At the time, it worked really well for me.

But moving house — and honestly just shifting my priorities a little bit over the last couple of years — has made me reflect quite a lot on work-life balance and how I actually want things to look going forward.

As much as I’ll always give work my best while I’m there, I don’t want work to quietly take over evenings and weekends in the way it used to. I’ve realised that I want a bit more separation between work and home life and I want to be able to properly switch off at the end of the day instead of always feeling slightly “on”.

So when we moved here and suddenly found ourselves with an extra bedroom, turning it into a proper office just made sense.

What’s really lovely about this room is that it’s been the one room in the house that’s just mine to decorate. Every other room has involved compromise (lots of compromise in the case of our giant dining room table 😁), practicality or bigger priorities, but this little room is just for me and I knew straight away that I wanted it to feel calm, cosy and somewhere that made me happy when I opened the door in the morning.

It obviously wasn’t high on the priority list when it comes to the money we’re spending on the house though because at the end of the day, it’s just a room for me to work in. As long as I’ve got a desk, a chair and my laptop then technically I’m good to go.

So, rather than go out and spend a fortune on furnishing a room from scratch, I’ve spent the last few months gathering bits to go in there – some of the things are new, some are pre-loved and some are things that we already owned that have been moved from other rooms in the house.

I’ve just finished putting it all together and I absolutely love it so I thought I’d share a little bit of me and my space with you today…

My little yellow writing bureau was from a local vintage shop last year and when we got it, it was definitely in need of some TLC. We gave it a paint job and I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t regret the yellow for a little while but now that it’s where it was meant to be, I’m in love with it again. I’m pretty sure the cabinet and the paint together came to about £25 and aside from looking good in the space, it’s great storage. 

These shelves cost £5 from the same vintage shop that I bought the bureau from. 

They were super cheap as I bought them on the last day they were open before they closed their doors for good (sad times) and they’ve been sitting in our garage ever since waiting to be moved up into the office.

I won’t bore you by going through everything on there but there’s a few things I wanted to share about what’s on there. 

First up, the OH LA LAAA sign is one that Miss Frugal and I bought when we went to LA on holiday and I love seeing it on my wall as it makes me smile when I see it. We had the most amazing time away together and made some lifelong memories together. 

The clock could have been made for this room as it’s the exact same colour as the walls and I loved the vintage style of it when I spotted it on the shelf at a charity shop near me for £3.49. I say spotted it but I actually heard it first as it has the loudest ticking noise you can imagine. Seriously, you can hear it at the other end of the house!

I did a quick search on Google Lens to find out a bit more about it and I learned it’s proper vintage, made in the 1970s so it’s older than me which is no mean feat these days. 😁

And this is where the magic happens – my actual desk. 

It’s actually a large piece of worktop from the Ikea bargain basement fixed to an old desk that we had as I wanted it to fit a very specific gap in the room between the radiator and the window frame.

The Amazon Alexa on my desk was a Facebook Marketplace bargain because it was basically brand new and only cost us £30. I used to just use the main Alexa when I worked in the dining room, but obviously that’s needed downstairs now so it was either buy one for the office or sit working in complete silence which definitely wasn’t happening. 😂

I love the fact that everything in the room feels collected rather than bought all at once and I love that it’s not all matchy matchy. It feels like a little calm corner that belongs only to me. A place where I can open the door in the morning, sit down with my laptop and feel like I’m starting the day properly.

And hopefully, when the working day is done, I can shut the door behind me and leave work in there too.

I’d love you follow me on Twitter and it would be amazing to see you over on my Facebook page and on Instagram. If you’re interested, you can find out more about me here and while I’ve got your attention, if you’re wondering why some of my posts lately are a little bit less frugal then have a read of this post. 😉

Do your future self a favour – Pin this post for later.